Monday, December 24, 2007

Zero Coverage Of Tribe Secession In MSM

This story of secession from all treaties by the Lakota Sioux interests me a great deal. On Dec.20 the news that activist Russel Means and other tribal representatives formally delivered a statement of "unilateral withdrawal" to the feds in Washington made a brief appearance in the news, and then the story was dropped. Not surprising since it is Xmas after all and we get the obligatory shopping blather and previously planned year end wrap ups.

It's actually a great example of contemporary news coverage, and it can go a lot of different ways. If it is a legitimate secession movement it's a blockbuster story with tremendous significance to law and other separatist movements all over the world. The despicable MSM apparently took orders from above and have shelved the story. There have been disparaging remarks made about Means and the declaration, saying he's a publicity hound and that he doesn't speak for the Sioux nation. But two things are wrong with that - when news breaks that disturbs the PTB the messenger is always attacked, and Sioux nation elders have yet to disavow this declaration.

Means and his delegation seemed to have picked their timing well. I'm sure their decision was swayed by the UN outlawing discrimination against indigenous people back in September.

Treatment of the Sioux by the US government has been nothing short of violently criminal. Even if this movement eventually goes nowhere it may help enlighten people who don't know their own government's vicious and illegal history:

"The Lakota (Brother) Peoples were a confederacy of twelve tribes who inhabited the high plains from Western Wisconsin to Eastern Montana, and from South Dakota north into Saskatchewan and Manitoba. The Lakota spoke a Siouxan language and, along with many other tribes who were not Lakota, they were referred to by the French Canadian fur trappers who were the first Europeans to meet them, as the “Sioux.”

In 1869 several of the Lakota tribes met with the United States representatives to negotiate a treaty at Fort Laramie, which the U.S promptly began violating. The treaty set up what was called “The Great Sioux Reservation,” which, at that time, included most of North and South Dakota and part of eastern Montana. Other Lakota tribes living farther east, who were collectively called the “Dakota,” had already signed treaties on their own with the U.S. several years before. In that treaty the U.S. agreed to respect the territorial soverginty of the western Sioux Nations. But when the government needed to put the Northern Pacific Railroad through the Great Sioux Reservation, and the deal with the railroad was a gift of every other section (a square mile) of land in a checkerboard pattern fifteen miles deep both north and south of the tracks, from St. Paul Minisota to the Puget Sound, which the railroad could use for lumbering, mining, and sale to settlers, then the government needed to take back a big hunk of the reservation. A plot was worked out that involved General Philip Sheridan and Colonel George Custer, and several other leading officials in the Territory to fake a gold discovery in the Black Hills, which were the most sacred lands on earth to the Lakota, the sacred Paha Sapa, the center of the world. A supposedly innocent survey party arranged the gold discovery using a few lumps of quartz, a hand-full of placer gold dust from Montana, and a shot gun, and when they returned to civilization with the evidence they deliberately let everyone know about it in the newspapers, thus starting a massive gold rush. The Lakota, of course, defended their lands against the invading gold hunters, and the U.S. Army, of course, was called in to protect the gold seakers, not the Indians. This started the war that culminated in the Little Bighorn massacre, and the flight of about half of the Sioux peoples into Canada that winter. The United States then terminated the Great Sioux Reservation and replaced it with a double hand-full of very small reservations scattered across the territory on some of the worst land the government could find."

6 Comments:

I, too, have noticed the blackout. It's fucking huge news, and I don't think it's just because I'm personally sensitive to the issue. It is like a state seceding... that's a big land mass removing itself from U.S. governance.

Not hearing a peep, if it weren't for the internet and bloggers I'm sure it would have passed under my radar.

Of course, I get the grand majority of my news from the internet and bloggers... so this isn't too surprising now that I look at it.

Just like you bpaul I get virtually all my info from the net. I pay attention to MSM only to monitor how the majority is being propagandized. This is the way I look at it - people who willingly sit in front of a TV or buy a newspaper are passive consumers who accept what they're handed, people like you and me are active consumers who bypass the filters and figure things out for ourselves. A world of difference there.

This is the first I have heard of this....I cover tv and radio news for all of eastern montana for the eastern MT CBS afilliate. I can assure you that neither side has sent out press releases to our office.

If someone would like to provide me with some contacts and more info, I would be interested in running a story.